Being that February is Dilla month, there’s always a flurry of articles, mixes and homage projects put online to celebrate the work of someone who was undeniably one of the greatest hip hop producers of our times. I’ve been collecting the most relevant for my research – a couple of which I’ve already posted – [...] Read more – ‘Questlove on Dilla’.
My good friend Primus Luta posted the following article yesterday on Dilla, beattapes and unquantizing – among other things. With today marking Dilla’s birthday I felt it appropriate to include here, not least because Dilla is a huge part of this project but also because Primus touches on a lot of things that are relevant [...] Read more – ‘On Dilla, beattapes and unquantizing drums’.
While preparing the talks based on A Boom Bap Continuum I realised that I needed a way to end each talk, to look to the future in a sense. When we made the mix a big part of it was trying to encompass what we say as ten years of beats and by itself that [...] Read more – ‘The Making of Danny Brown’s XXX’.
Another flagrant omission. Taken from Machinedrum’s second LP – Half The Battle – this is one of those songs that totally blows your mind when you think it was released in 2002 as it sounds so ‘modern’ / of the now in terms of its overall aesthetic and the way the rhythm functions. I’d actually [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #8 – Machinedrum ‘All Bitches and Wheels (Proemix)’.
Ok not an omission as such as we had the Prefuse remix of 360 degrees in the mix, though omission in so far as there was nothing from the man himself or from his earlier work. If you don’t know check the discogs, Push Button Objects was definitely an unsung early pioneer of more experimental [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #7 – Push Button Objects’.
Another key producer in the evolution of boom bap’s aesthetic, especially in the early parts of the 00s with his releases as Prefuse 73 on Warp, Scott Herren talks about accidents and how these fed into his work as Prefuse 73. We lifted that accident quote for the mix alongside others from the same interview [...] Read more – ‘ABBC samples #4 – Scott Herren on accidents’.
Not quite sure how we missed that one when culling samples for the mix. Anyways I was reminded last night that Dabrye had in fact done a lecture for RBMA’s 2007 edition in Toronto so went through it and found some gems. Most notably at 38 mins in when he laments his music being described [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #6 – Dabrye RBMA Lecture’.
Apologies to Stones Throw for re-using their title – I just couldn’t think of anything better James Yancey aka Jay Dee aka J Dilla was, alongside Madlib and Premier, probably the most influential producer in the A Boom Bap Continuum mix and the ideas that birthed it. He was an inspiration to many and his [...] Read more – ‘The story behind some J Dilla’s greatest productions’.
Another one we omitted despite rinsing it regularly for years. Tipper’s Dogghouse Instrumentals EP came out in 05 and is tied to an album entitled Tip Hop. The really killer track on that EP is ‘Low Low Shit’ but youtube isn’t forthcoming with it so here’s ‘Pins and Needles’ instead. A bit less interesting but [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #5 – Tipper Dogghouse instrumentals’.
I’ll never quite forget when I first heard this. Even though it was 2007, it had a similar impact to early influential productions by the likes of Dabrye. The way it combined dubstep’s bass pressure and templatic bpm with a boom bap swing and the soon-to-be trademark sidechained, distorted synths of beats was enough to [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #4 – Various Production ‘Bun’’.
Another flagrant omission on our part, especially considering Om Unit and I used to rinse this track back in the days at the Dragon Bar. Ty ‘We Don’t Care’, taken from the first Big Dada compilation Extra Yard: The Bouncement Revolution and released in 2003. Produced by Drew and Ty, this is another perfect example [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #3 – Big Dada’.
In 2009 I had the pleasure to meet and have a long chat with Take aka Sweatson Klank, one of the original pioneers of beats in L.A. Aside from his role as a producer, Take’s most notable for his involvement in Sketchbook a night that few people outside of L.A knew of until 2010 when [...] Read more – ‘ABBC samples #3 – Take on the birth of the beat scene in L.A’.
Another one we sampled, Madlib’s brother Oh No dropping knowledge at the 2005 RBMA edition. We sampled this for the intro and other parts of the mix. You know what I’m sayin’… Read more – ‘ABBC samples #2 – Oh No RBMA lecture’.
Now here’s a funny one. Since agreeing to do these lectures based on the ABBC mix, I’ve had the idea of doing an infographic of the boom bap continuum. Trying to combine the chronological element of the mix/theory with the producers and geographical locations to create something visual that could easily summarise the idea and [...] Read more – ‘Beats infographic’.
Seeing as we’ve lost all the samples we spent time laboriously finding and chopping up for the mix – all the voices from producers and DJs that soundtrack the mix and add a degree of context to what we were trying to do with the music – I’ve got to start all over again and [...] Read more – ‘ABBC samples #1 – MJTV x Jay Scarlett’.
Now I can’t quite believe we somehow skipped Dimlite in the mix, but hey we did. Mea culpa and all that. The reclusive Swiss producer is hands down one of the most influential, if not outspoken, producers of the 00s when it comes to new school hip hop and the evolution of the boom bap [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #2 – Dimlite’.
One of the things we quickly realised when originally putting together the Boom Bap Continuum mix is that there was no way in hell we could be absolutely thorough about what to include – if we’d tried to we would probably have never released the thing. As part of the research I’m doing for the [...] Read more – ‘ABBC omissions #1 – What About Us?’.
In the process of working on the first A Boom Bap Continuum lecture I pitched an Essential Dabrye feature to Fact mag which they went for. These are ten productions which I think are not only essential to understanding Dabrye’s influence on the evolution of boom bap/hip hop production but also essential for anyone who [...] Read more – ‘The Essential Dabrye’.
Came across this link on twitter a few weeks back (thanks to David Moynihan). It’s an interview with Simon Reynolds about his latest book, Retromania, and it includes a strangely worded question about his opinion of the Boom Bap Continuum mix and theory. I say strangely worded because the question implies that he never stressed [...] Read more – ‘Simon Reynolds and the boom bap continuum’.
